The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

	Hafiz dares US to take him out like Osama Makes public his itinerary for the next few days, denies 26/11 links Islamabad, April 4 A combative Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief, today dared the US to carry out a military raid against him like the one that killed Osama bin Laden, saying he was not hiding and would inform the Americans himself about his whereabouts. Saeed made the remarks while addressing a news conference with other leaders of the Defa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC) at Flashman Hotel in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, located a short distance from the Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters. This is his first press conference after American administration offered a reward of $10 million for him on Monday. He even taunted the US to give him the bounty offered for him under the Rewards for Justice programme, saying he would inform American authorities about his whereabouts. “I am not hiding in caves and mountains, I am here in Rawalpindi,” he said. Saeed offered to make public his itinerary for the next few days, saying he intended to travel to Narowal in Punjab later in the day and then go to Lahore tomorrow. He even claimed that if the US gave him the bounty, he would use the money in the impoverished province of Balochistan and account for its expenditure. Reiterating his claim that the JuD and its workers had no links to the 2008 Mumbai attacks, he contended that there was no evidence against him. He dismissed allegations about his involvement in terrorism as “Indian claims that are part of media propaganda”. Saeed further claimed that Pakistan’s Supreme Court had upheld an order of the Lahore High Court that “cleared him and his organisation” after the Interior Minister had approached the apex court. — PTI $10 mn bounty on Saeed for 26/11 attack: US Washington: The US has made it clear that a $10 million bounty on Hafiz Saeed was primarily due to his key role in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. “It (bounty) has everything to do with Mumbai and his brazen flouting of the justice system,” the State Department spokesperson said. Pak seeks ‘concrete evidence’ from US Islamabad: Pakistan on Wednesday sought “concrete evidence” from the US against top Jamaat-ud-Dawah leaders Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Abdul Rehman Makki following the announcement of bounties for them, saying this was necessary to “proceed legally” in the matter.
	Pak-Canadian jailed for 14 years for helping KCF New York, April 4 A 50-year-old Pakistani-Canadian has been sentenced to 14 years in jail for providing material support to the Sikh militant group Khalistan Commando Force (KCF), blamed for carrying out assassinations and bombings in India. Khalid Awan was convicted in 2006 by a US federal jury in Brooklyn for providing financial aid to the KCF. In 2007, Awan was given a 14-year prison sentence which was vacated by the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court had ordered a lower court to consider handing him a longer sentence for "terrorism enhancement" after prosecutors filed an appeal. Awan was re-sentenced yesterday to 14 years' imprisonment by federal judge Allyne Ross on terrorism charges. "During yesterday's sentencing proceeding, the district court found that all three of Awan's crimes intended to promote crimes of terrorism, and imposed a prison sentence of 14 years," the Justice Department said yesterday. In a statement, the FBI said KCF comprises Sikh militants seeking a separate Sikh state in Punjab and has been responsible for thousands of deaths in India since it was founded in 1986. The organisation has engaged in numerous assassinations of prominent Indian government officials - including that of Chief Minister Beant Singh of Punjab in 1995 - and hundreds of bombings, acts of sabotage, and kidnappings. The US Attorney's Office and the FBI began investigation against Awan in 2003 after an inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, where Awan was jailed on federal credit card fraud charges, reported that Awan boasted of his relationship with Paramjit Singh Panjwar, KCF's leader and one of the 10 most wanted fugitives in India. — PTI
	Romney sweeps 3 key primaries Triple win puts him past the halfway mark to the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination Washington, April 4 Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney today swept the three key primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington DC, cementing his status as the almost certain nominee of the party to challenge incumbent Barack Obama in the November polls. “This has really been quite a night. We won a great victory tonight in our campaign to restore the promise of America,” 65-year-old Romney, the former Massachusetts Governor, said in a victory speech to supporters in Milwaukee. Romney’s triple win puts him past the halfway mark to the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination. Romney has collected 648 delegates since the primary and caucuses began in January, more than twice the 264 delegates his nearest rival Rick Santorum is estimated to hold. Former US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Congressman Ron Paul trailed far behind in primary results. Santorum, the former Senator from Pennsylvania, who has faced calls to bow out of the race in the name of party unity, defiantly vowed to fight on and seemed to pin all his hopes on the primary in Pennsylvania which is scheduled for April 24. In his speech, Romney also attacked the Obama administration and his inability to address the concerns of American people. — PTI
	Romney graduates from front-runner to underdog Washington, April 4 With a sweep of three presidential primaries on Tuesday, Mitt Romney graduated from Republican front-runner to underdog in a November match-up against Democratic President Barack Obama. Romney’s wins gave him a prohibitive lead in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination, analysts said, and effectively consigned chief rival Rick Santorum to also-ran status. Now the former Massachusetts governor faces an uphill climb as he takes on a well-funded opponent who travels to campaign events by Air Force One. The jousting already has begun. Obama criticized Romney by name while blasting a Republican budget plan on Tuesday, a move the president had avoided until now. Romney made no mention of Santorum or any other Republican rivals in his victory speech in Wisconsin late Tuesday, focusing instead on Obama. “In Barack Obama’s government-centered society, the government must do more because the economy is doomed to do less,” Romney told supporters in Milwaukee. “When you attack business and vilify success, you will have less business and less success.” As Romney pivots to take on Obama in the November 6 election, he faces a daunting to-do list. — Reuters
	Powerful tornadoes strike Texas Ground flights but no reported casualities Washington, April 4 At least two tornadoes ripped across northern Texas, the National Weather Service said, causing major damage and grounding flights, but leaving no reported casualties. “Tornado Emergency. Two tornadoes are currently affecting the DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) Metroplex. Take cover now!” the service’s online alert board said yesterday. As residents cowered in shelters, local television images showed school buses, trucks and train cars that had been tossed through the air before plunging to the ground, along with houses damaged by the powerful twisters. A tornado watch was issued for the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, home to more than six million people, until 8:00 pm (0100 GMT today). “911 (emergency services) is going off the wall, with people calling in, sightings of tornadoes, possible sightings of tornado as of up to about 20 minutes ago,” Lieutenant Tim Jones of Johnson County Sheriff’s Office told CNN. “Now we get people calling to make sure their relatives are okay.” Texas congressman Michael Burgess, a Republican, told MSNBC he worried that the intensity of the storms could mean significant damage. Airport passengers were sheltering at the huge facility, though flights were expected to soon resume, Magana said. — AFP
	Special to The Tribune ‘No silver bullet for dealing with Iran’ Shyam Bhatia in New Delhi There is no silver bullet for dealing with Iran’s nuclear preparations and even a future military attack only makes sense if it is part of a broader international effort to restrain Iran’s rulers from carrying out a nuclear test. So says Major General Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, Aman, for whom the scope and intent of Iran’s nuclear programme is a daily concern. Although he retired from Aman some 18 months ago, the focus on Iran remains unchanged. In fact in his new incarnation as Director of the Tel Aviv University’s Institute of National Security Studies (INSS), Yadlin’s vision of Iran has become even more apocalyptic. Not for him the benign vision of some Indian analysts who argue that the Iranians are actually the most pro-West of any Middle East country and that the power of radical mullahs will be broken once international pressure on Iran is relaxed. That is the luxury of a vision that Yadlin cannot afford to share and he said as much this week on the sidelines of a New Delhi seminar jointly sponsored by the INSS and the Observer Research Foundation. His alternative perspective is of an Iran regime that repeatedly calls for the annihilation of Israel. “So this very radical people when they have the very radical weapon is a threat Israel should pay attention to,” Yadlin explains in an exclusive interview. He adds that a nuclear Iran would inevitably trigger a nuclear arms race with the Arab world, leading to the end of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In his view, the worst that Iran could do is launch a nuclear bomb in the direction of Tel Aviv, leading to the destruction of the Jewish state. “Sure they have the delivery system,” he explains, barely pausing for breath. “They have hundreds of (North Korean-made) Shihab missiles with the range of 1300-200 km, Israel is exactly in the middle of it, and when they have the nuclear weapon they can launch it with the missiles. And of course they can ship it in a container to Tel Aviv port, as well as to other ports in the world.” Back home in Israel, Yadlin is an old-fashioned air force hero. He wears his laurels lightly, but ordinary Israelis remember him fondly as one of the F16 fighter pilots who took off from Israel on the morning of June 7, 1981, and knocked out the Osirak reactor near Baghdad where Saddam Hussein was said to be accumulating plutonium for the Arab world’s first nuclear weapon. Asked what lessons can be drawn from the experience of the 1981 operation, he says the main lesson is that Israel’s attack was not the reason why Iraq did not achieve its nuclear goal. “It was only the trigger to a broader and more comprehensive campaign.” Diplomatic sanctions, efforts to stop technology transfers, understanding the Iraqis and their limitations created a 10 year delay, he explains. The 1991 attack by the Americans delayed the Iraqis by another 12 years. “My argument says that sometimes a military attack buys you more time for a comprehensive and alternative strategy that will deal with the fact that a very radical regime will not have a very radical weapon.” For Israeli experts like Yadlin, the dismantling of Iraq’s nuclear assets, just like those of Libya and Syria, has had a profound knock-on effect on Iran which has shaped its own strategy accordingly.
	12 killed in Afghan blast Mazar-i-Sharif, April 4 A suicide bomber attacked foreign military forces in northern Afghanistan today, killing up to 12 persons, officials said, although the identities of the victims was unclear. “A suicide bomber targeted a group of foreign friends” near a park in Maymana, the capital of Faryab province, provincial governor Abdul Haq Shafaq told AFP. “They were military. “There are casualties, dead and wounded, but an exact death toll is not known yet. I don’t know their nationalities.” Faryab, which borders Turkmenistan, is far from centres of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan’s south and east, although the Islamist militia are present in some areas of the province and it suffers sporadic attacks. — PTI